— but, he [Hegel] says, it is already a great "infinite merit of Kantian philosophy" that at least it
(let it be *ohne Begriff*) indicated this.

"Formalism, it is true, also appropriated to itself the trinity and held fast to its empty schema; but the superficiality, the scandalousness and emptiness of contemporary so-called philosophical "construction," which consists solely in arbitrarily imposing this formal schema everywhere, without concept and without immanent determinateness, and using it to establish external order, have made this form tedious and given it a bad reputation. Yet because of the banality of this usage, it cannot lose its inner value, and all the same it must be rated highly that thereby at least an image of the rational—not yet grasped in concepts—has been found" (344-345) [311].

The result of the negation of negation, this third is not... "a resting third, but rather this unity" (of opposites), "which is a self-mediating movement and activity"... (345) [312].

The result of this dialectical transformation into the "third," into synthesis, is a new presupposition, assertion, etc., which again becomes the source of further analysis.

But into it, this "third" stage, there has already entered the "content" of knowledge ("the content of knowledge as such enters the circle of consideration") — and the method expands into a system (346) [313].

The beginning of all reasoning, of all analysis — this first presupposition — now seems already indeterminate, "imperfect"; there arises the necessity to prove it, to "derive" (ableiten) it; it appears that "this may seem like a requirement of an infinite regress going backward in proof and derivation" (347) [313-314] — but on the other hand, the new presupposition pushes forward...

Hegel
harshly denounces formalism, the tedium, the emptiness of playing at dialectics

* — without concept. — Editor.

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V. I. LENIN

..."Knowledge moves from content to content. In the first place, this progressive movement is characterized by the fact that it begins with simple determinatenesses and that those which follow become ever richer and more concrete. For the result contains within itself its beginning, and the movement of the latter has enriched it with a certain new determinateness. The universal constitutes the foundation; therefore the progressive movement must not be taken for a flow from one thing to another.

The concept in the absolute method is preserved in its otherness, the universal — in its particularization, in judgment and reality; at each step of further determination the universal raises up within itself the entire mass of its preceding content and not only loses nothing by virtue of its dialectical progressive movement and leaves nothing behind itself, but carries along with it all that has been acquired, and becomes enriched and consolidated within itself"... (349) [315].

This passage quite nicely draws up a kind of summary of what dialectics is.

But expansion also requires deepening ("In-sich-gehen"*) "and the greater expansion is equally a higher intensity."

"The richest is therefore the most concrete and the most subjective, and that which returns itself into the most simple depth — the most powerful and predominant" (349) [316].

"It is precisely in this way that it happens that each step forward in the progressive movement, each further determination, moving away from the indeterminate beginning, represents at the same time a retrograde approach to the latter, and thus that which could initially seem different — the backward grounding of the beginning and the forward further determination of it — coincide in one and are one and the same" (350) [316].

Note this well:
The richest is the most concrete
and the most subjective

* — "Going into itself." — Editor.

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